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The effect of parenting styles on the level of political trust among

adolescents.

Smets & Quintelier

Abstract

In this article we want to examine the effect of parenting styles on the political trust among

adolescents. Based upon Baumrind’s conceptualization of parenting styles and previous

studies we formulate three hypotheses. Using the Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012, we

find that adolescents raised in families with an authoritative parenting style have higher levels

of political trust, whereas adolescents raised in families with an authoritarian and a permissive

parenting style have lower levels of political trust. Second, we find that it is not the actual

parenting style of the parent, but the way adolescents perceive the parenting styles that has an

effect on their level of political trust. Third we find that the homogeneity of parenting styles

between parents does not intensify the levels of political trust among adolescents.

Keywords

Socialization, family, parenting styles, political trust

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Introduction

Most political attitudes are only expressed when reaching adulthood, yet they are

primarily developed during childhood and adolescence. Therefore, to fully understand how

political attitudes are formed, it is important to study the development of these attitudes

among children and adolescents. Most scholars agree that children learn political attitudes

through interactions with various socialization agents, such as the family, school and class

environment, media, peers, etc. Even though all of these agents have an influence on the

socialization process, scholars consider families, and parents in particular, to be one of the

main socialization agents (McIntosh, Hart, & Youniss, 2007; Padilla-Walker, 2007; Sherrod,

Flanagan, & Youniss, 2002; Steinberg & Silk, 2002; Steinberg, 2001). Ever since the 1960s,

when the study of political socialization started to receive scholarly attention, researchers

have tried to study the influence of the family on the development of various social and

political attitudes and behavior. In this article, we want to focus on the effect of parenting

styles on the level of political trust among adolescents. Previous research has shown that

adolescents already have a clear notion about the political institutions and are able to judge

the functioning of these institutions, resulting in a certain level of political trust, which

remains rather stable throughout adulthood (Claes, Hooghe, & Marien, 2012; Hooghe &

Wilkenfeld, 2007; Kokkonen, Esaiasson, & Gilljam, 2010; Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2003).

Additionally, although previous research has shown that parents have an effect on the

development of these levels of political trust among adolescents (Jennings & Niemi, 1974;

Jennings, Stoker, & Bowers, 2009), most scholars do not tend to take parenting styles into

account in their research, while it has been demonstrated that this can have a favorable impact

on young people’s attitudes (Flanagan, 2013; Miklikowska & Hurme, 2011; Stattin, Persson,

Burk, & Kerr, 2011). In addition, when scholars do focus on parenting styles in their research,

they most often use data reported by mothers or the adolescents themselves (Dalhouse &

Frideres, 1996; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012). However, this could bias the results, since

scholars found that the father also has an influence on the development of his child (Carlson,

2006; Gryczkowski, Jordan, & Mercer, 2009; Phares, Fields, Kamboukos, & Lopez, 2005). In

this study we will use data from adolescents, mothers as well as father to avoid this limitation.

A crucial factor in this socialization process is the quality of the parent-child

relationship. There already exist a long withstanding tradition to study the influence of the

parent-child relationship on the development of behavior and attitudes of the child. These

studies usually follow Baumrind’s notion that parenting styles are considered to be a subtle

process of socialization (Baumrind, 1968). In other words, through the ways of parenting,

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adolescents’ political values are influenced since they will transcend their experiences in the

family system onto the political system.

In sum, we want to examine the effect of parenting styles on the development of

political trust. Since interactions with authorities play an important role in the development of

political trust (Gniewosz, Noack, & Buhl, 2009) and family, and more specifically parents,

can be considered as authority figures during adolescence, we can assume that the

development of levels of political trust among adolescents could be affected by the parenting

styles of the parents. We will also examine whether parenting styles as perceived by the

adolescents affect the development of political trust, or rather the actual parenting styles (as

reported by the parents). In addition, we investigate whether the effects of the socialization

process are stronger in families with homogeneous parenting practices.

We will first give on overview of the existing studies on parenting styles and

socialization literature, resulting in three hypotheses. Next, we will operationalize the

variables we will use during the analyses. Next we perform multivariate regression analyses

to investigate our hypotheses. We end we an in-depth discussion about our findings.

The role of parenting styles in the socialization process

Individuals’ social and political behavior and attitudes are developed several years

before they can take part in politics as a full member of the political system (Davies, 1965).

This development is often driven by several socialization experiences. These experiences can

occur in different contexts: the school or classroom, with peers, through media or in family

context. Without diminishing the importance of other socialization agents, scholars often

consider parents as primary socialization agents (Maccoby, 1992; Sherrod et al., 2002;

Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2003), even well beyond childhood (Jennings et al., 2009; Steinberg

& Silk, 2002). It is already widely accepted among scholars that the quality of family

relationships is crucial for the social and cognitive development of children and adolescents

(Luengo, Gómez-Fraguela & Romero, 2006). The family can be considered as a mini-system,

in which these experiences take place: experiences within this mini-system are transcended

onto the political system (e.g. Flanagan, 2013; Miklikowska & Hurme, 2011; Stattin et al.,

2011). In other words, what children or adolescents learn or feel within the family system,

will affect their behavior and attitudes towards the political system.

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One major influence in this mini-system is the style parents use to raise their children.

Feeling valued and respected are psychologically important experiences that adolescents

associate with the contexts in which they occur and these associations help motivate

adolescents’ choices in other contexts (Persson, Kerr, & Stattin, 2007). Parenting styles are

defined as a “constellation of attitudes towards the child that are communicated to the child

and that, taken together, create an emotional climate in which the parents’ behaviors are

expressed” (Darling & Steinberg, 1993: 488). In other words, parenting styles describe the

way parents interact with their child in different situations. Baumrind (1968) identified three

main typologies of parenting styles, based on parental control: the permissive, the

authoritarian and the authoritative parenting style. The permissive style implies that parents

tend to behave in a freely, non-punitive and acceptant way. They are open to their child’s

needs, but have very few demands and rules. In terms of control, the permissive parent tries to

avoid exerting control over their children. The authoritarian style implies that the parents do

exercise control over their child, by exerting power though strict rules and punishment. They

value obedience and respect and do not encourage any parent-child dialogue. The

authoritative style tries to find middle ground between the permissive and authoritarian style.

Authoritative parents are open for parent-child dialogue. They exercise control over their

children, but always attempt to explain their actions. In other words, parents use reason as

well as power when raising their children (Baumrind, 1968, 2005). Even though researchers

in this field often use a different operationalization to measure parenting styles, they have

consistently found that an authoritative style has positive effects on the personal, social and

political development of the child or adolescent (e.g. Allen, Porter, McFarland, McElhaney, &

Marsh, 2007; Baumrind, 2005; Kim-Spoon, Longo, & McCullough, 2012; Miklikowska &

Hurme, 2011; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012), while authoritarianism and permissiveness have

a negative effect (e.g.Gniewosz et al., 2009; Persson et al., 2007; Raja, McGee, & Stanton,

1992).

In this article we want to examine whether parenting styles influences the development

of levels of political trust among adolescents. Previous research has shown that parental

warmth and involvement have a positive effect on the development of democratic behavior

and attitudes, while a controlling environment and personal attacks have shown to encourage

anti-democratic behavior and attitudes Research has also shown that being raised in an open

family system, with room for discussion and dialogue is positively linked to the adolescents’

feelings of parental trust. Subsequently, when adolescents are raised in a controlling family

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system with limited or harsh communication and (physical) punishment, this leads to lower

feelings of parental trust among adolescents (Kerr, Stattin, & Trost, 1999). Following these

findings and considering that the family functions as a mini system, it seems reasonable to

assume that parenting styles will affect the level of political trust among adolescents.

Following this, we formulate our first hypothesis.

H1: Adolescents raised in families with an authoritative parenting style will have

higher levels of political trust, while adolescents raised in families with an

authoritarian parenting style will have lower levels of political trust

However, there are most likely discrepancies between the parenting style the parents

think they use and how the adolescents interprets the style (Knafo & Schwartz, 2003; Padilla-

Walker & Carlo, 2004; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012). It is therefore possible that

adolescents report different parenting styles than their parents, because they perceive it

differently. The question then is: which parenting style matters for the attitudes of the child,

the actual parenting style as intended by the parents or the parenting style as perceived by the

adolescent? Previous research found that, the democratic climate the youths perceive in the

family might be more important than the individual behavior of their parents (Dalhouse &

Frideres, 1996; Stattin et al., 2011). Following this, we have formulate our second hypothesis.

H2: It is not the intended parenting practices of the parent, but the way adolescents

perceive the parenting styles that has an effect on their level of political trust.

In addition, we also have to consider that both parents do not necessarily use the same

parenting style. It could very well be, for example, that the mother uses a more authoritarian

parenting style, while the father is more authoritative or vice versa. Therefore, it is equally

important to examine the dynamics between parents to have a complete and correct overview

of the effect of parenting styles on the development of political trust among adolescents.

There is little debate among scholars on the positive effects of parental homogeneity on the

intergenerational transmission of political behavior and attitudes, such as party preferences

(Jennings et al., 2009; Rico & Jennings, 2012; Zuckerman, Dasovic, & Fitzgerald, 2007) or

academic achievement (Gniewosz & Noack, 2012). Following this, it seems possible that

homogeneity of parenting styles also has an effect on the development of political behavior

and attitudes. We assume that the homogeneity of an authoritative parenting styles will have a

positive effect on the development of the adolescents’ level of political trust. Subsequently,

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homogeneity of an authoritarian and a permissive parenting style will have a negative effect

on the development of levels of political trust among adolescents. Following this, we have

formulate our final hypothesis.

H3: The homogeneity of parenting styles between mothers and fathers will have an

intensifying effect on the level of political trust among adolescents.

Data and methods

Data

To examine these hypotheses, we will use data from the first wave of the Parent-Child

Socialization Study (PCSS). This is a Belgian study among 3,426 adolescents and their

parents, which was conducted in the Spring of 2012. The aim of this survey is to examine the

development of various social and political behavior and attitudes among adolescents and the

influence of their parents on this development.

Participants

Adolescents. A total of 3,426 adolescents completed the questionnaire during one class

hour (50 minutes) in 59 Dutch language schools. The adolescents were selected by a stratified

random sample, based upon the location of the school and educational track (general,

technical, artistic and vocational) (Hooghe, Quintelier, Verhaegen, Boonen, & Meeusen,

2012). The respondents closely mirrored the distribution in the Flemish population among

educational tracks (44% general education, 3% artistic education, 33% technical education,

20% vocational education) and gender (54% boys, 46% girls) (Hooghe et al., 2012). 76.4% of

the adolescents reported that their parents are married or living together as if married, 6.3%

reported to spend equal time with their mother and father through co-parenting arrangements,

13% reported to mainly live with their mother and only 1.7% reported to mainly live with

their father. 1,5% of the adolescents marked “others” to describe their home situation (N =

2,063).

Parents. The adolescents received two additional questionnaires for their parents,

which could be filled out at home. The parents could send the questionnaires back via mail

free of charge. Parents who did not respond spontaneously were reminded twice through

telephone or e-mail. For 72.2% of the adolescents one parent answered. For 60.8% of the

adolescents both parents filled out the questionnaire. This results in a total of 2,085 complete

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child-mother-father triads. To be able to examine the influence of both mothers and fathers,

only these complete triads will be used during the analyses.

Advantages and limitations of the PCSS

Besides questions about political and social attitudes, such as political and social trust,

the adolescents’ and parents’ surveys entailed questions about the family structure and

parenting styles. This means we have direct information about adolescents and both parents in

regard to our hypotheses. Since most other research tends to focus on the influence of only

one parent (Dalhouse & Frideres, 1996; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012), the PCSS provides us

with a great advantage since we are able to examine the effects of both parents. In addition,

some questions about parenting styles were asked about mother and father separately in the

adolescent’ survey. This means we can examine the effects of the mothers and fathers

separately. Moreover, our design allows us to examine the perceived as well as the actual

parenting practices of the parents. All of the former described reasons make the PCSS utterly

appropriate to examine our hypotheses. A disadvantage of the survey is that the study is

limited to Dutch language adolescents in Belgium and therefore cannot be generalized toward

other political systems.

Methods

First we conducted exploratory and bivariate analyses. Second, we conducted several

OLS multivariate regression analyses on the PCSS to examine our hypotheses.

Operationalization

Parenting styles.

Baumrind (1968) defined three types of parenting styles: permissive, authoritarian and

authoritative. In this article, we consider three variables to measure these parenting styles:

communication with parents, encouragement from parents and strictness of the parents. A

high score communication and encouragement and a low score on strictness coincide with a

permissive parenting style. A low score on communication and encouragement and a high

score on strictness correspond with an authoritarian style. A high score on communication

and encouragement, and a low score on strictness coincide with an authoritative style. I will

briefly discuss the operationalization of these variables (for a full overview of the questioning

see Appendix A).

Communication with parents. This variable consists out of three questions, ranging

from 1 (I never agree with this) to 4 (I always agree with this). The questions were posed in

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the adolescent’ and parents’ questionnaire, leading to three different variables: the

adolescents’ communication with their parents (eigenvalue: 1.99; explained variance: 66.21%;

Cronbach’s alpha: .74), communication with adolescent’ child reported by the mother

(eigenvalue: 2.03; explained variance: 67.98%; Cronbach’s alpha: .76) and communication

with adolescent’ child reported by the father (eigenvalue: 1.98; explained variance: 66.06%;

Cronbach’s alpha: .77). For the first hypothesis, the variable adolescents’ communication with

the parents was used, for the third hypothesis the variables communication with adolescent’

child reported by the mother and communication with adolescent’ child reported by the

father was used.

Encouragement from parents. This variable also consists out of three questions

ranging from 1 (I never agree with this) to 4 (I always agree with this). The variable was only

asked in the adolescents’ survey, but for mother and father separately, leading to the creation

of two variables: encouragement from mothers (eigenvalue: 2.33; explained variance:

58.32%; Cronbach’s alpha: .75) and encouragement from fathers (eigenvalue: 2.43; explained

variance: 60.62%; Cronbach’s alpha: .74). To examine the second hypothesis, we constructed

an interaction term between the variables encouragement from the mother and encouragement

from the father.

Strictness of the parents. This variable consists out of three questions, ranging from 1

(I never agree with this) to 4 (I always agree with this). This question was posed for both

parents combined and only in the adolescents’ survey. It leads to the creation of one new

variable: strictness of the parents (eigenvalue: 1.63; explained variance: 54.31%; Cronbach’s

alpha: .57).

Political trust

In the survey, the standard question to measure political trust was used: “to what

extent do you have trust in the following institutions ranging from 0 to 10” (0 meaning ‘no

trust at all’, 10 meaning ‘completely trusting’)? The included institutions are the police, the

courts, the Belgian parliament, the regional parliament, the Belgian government, the European

Union and political parties.

We constructed a sum scale to create a variable levels of political trust of the

adolescent (eigenvalue: 4.47; explained variance: 63.84%; Cronbach’s alpha: .90). We

repeated the same method to construct the variables levels of political trust of the mother

(eigenvalue: 4.95; explained variance: 70.70%; Cronbach’s alpha: .93) and levels of political

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trust of the father (eigenvalue: 4.95; explained variance: 70.66%; Cronbach’s alpha: .93),

which were used as control variables.

Control variables

Gender. Some scholars have found that gender has an effect on the level of political

trust (Hetherington, 1998; Zmerli & Hooghe, 2011). Girls were coded as one, boys were

coded as zero.

Educational track. We used educational track as indicator for the adolescents’

education level1. We recoded the original variable into dummy variables grouped by

education tracks. There are four main educational tracks in Flanders: general, technical,

artistic and vocational track. We constructed three dummy variables (technical, artistic and

vocational education track). The general education track was the largest group and hence

selected as reference category.

Analyses

Table 1 shows that the mean scores of the levels of political trust are more or less

similar for the mother and the father (p<.001). This indicates that gender does not have an

strong effect on the level of political trust. Adolescents, however, have a slightly higher mean

score for their level of political trust in comparison with their parents (p<.000).. This is in line

with previous research that found that children tend to be more positive towards authority and

that these positive feelings decline while growing up (Easton & Dennis, 1969).

Looking at the parenting styles measures, we can conclude that parents tend to report

overly positive about their parenting styles (Table 1). The mean scores of communication

with the adolescent are close to the maximum, meaning that most parents tend to agree with

the propositions about communication. In this regard, we notice discrepancies between

parents and their children, since the adolescents tend to report more negatively about their

parents’ communication patterns (p<.000)..

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the sample

Mean Minimum Maximum SD

1 We also controlled for the parents educational level, which also has an significant effect on the adolescents’

level of political trust. However, the significance disappears when educational track is included in the model,

suggesting that the education level of the adolescent has a more significant effect on the level of political trust

than the parents’ education level.

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Level of political trust of the

adolescent

5.51 0 10 1.695

Level of political trust of the mother 4.99 0 10 1.785

Level of political trust of the father 4.82 0 10 1.956

Communication with parents 2.89 1 4 .715

Encouragement from mother 3.06 1 4 .667

Encouragement from father 2.86 1 4 .594

Strictness of the parents 2.76 1 4 .594

Communication with adolescents

(mother)

3.46 1 4 .513

Communication with adolescents

(father)

3.31 1 4 .490

Source: Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012. Entries are means and standard deviations of the

dependent and independent variables.

The bivariate analyses show that there is a significant correlation between the

adolescents’ level of political trust and our measures for parenting styles as reported by the

adolescents, while there is no significant correlations between the measures for parenting

styles as reported by the parents (Table 2). This shows that the parenting styles as perceived

by the adolescents affect their levels of political trust, while the parenting styles as intended

by the parents do not have an effect on the development of political trust among adolescents.

These results strongly indicate that our first and second hypothesis could be confirmed.

However, to examine our hypotheses correctly we have to perform a multivariate analysis,

which allows to control for other influential variables.

Table 2. Correlations with adolescents’ level of political trust and the independent variables

Level of political trust of

adolescents

N

Level of political trust of the mother .132** 1991

Level of political trust of the father .128** 1931

Communication with parents .197** 2026

Encouragement from mother .121** 2019

Encouragement from father .159** 1960

Strictness of the parents .150** 2019

Communication with adolescents (mother) -.002ns 2011

Communication with adolescents (father) .011ns 1923 Source: Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012. Entries are Pearson correlations with political trust of

the child. Sign: * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001.

Next, we performed three multivariate regression analyses to examine the hypotheses.

The first model (Table 3) investigates whether parenting styles as reported by the adolescents

have an effect on the level of political trust among adolescents (hypothesis 1) and whether

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parenting styles as reported by the parents have a larger effect on the level of political trust

among the adolescent (hypothesis 2).In addition, we also examined the hypotheses for

families where parents live together and families where parents do not live together

separately, but the results were similar to the overall analyses (for a full overview of the

results, see Appendix C). The second model (Table 4) tests the effect of the interaction

between the parenting style of the mother and the father (hypothesis 3).

The first model (Table 3) shows that parenting styles significantly affect the level of

political trust among adolescents. We used three measures to examine the effect of parenting

style: communication with parents, encouragement from parents and strictness of the parents.

The results show that communication with parents has a positive and significant effect on the

adolescents’ level of political trust (β= .132, p<.000). This means that if parents have more

dialogue with their child and are open to discussion with their child, the higher the level of

political trust will be for the adolescent. Similar results were found for encouragement from

parents (β= .061, p=.012). When parents encourage their child to be independent and make

their own decisions and when they comfort them when they feel sad, this will also lead to

higher levels of political trust among adolescents. However, it is important to know how

parenting styles influence the political trust of the child: is it the parenting style as reported by

the parent or the parenting style as reported by the child that matters?. This analysis showed

that while encouragement from the father has a significant, positive effect on the adolescents’

levels of political trust (β= .100, p<.000), encouragement from the mother is not significant

(β= -.004, p=894) (for full overview of the results see Appendix B). Even if we only include

encouragement from the mother into the model, the effect remains not significant. A possible

explanation for this could be that fathers are traditionally seen as authority figures, while

mother are seen as more encompassing (Easton & Dennis, 1969; Phares et al., 2005). So if the

father is more encouraging, this will have a stronger effect because it is less expected by the

adolescent. The adolescents also perceive the mother as more encouraging than fathers (on

average). It could be that a lack of variance on the mother variable also affected the results.

The strictness of the parents also has a positive and significant effect (β= .126, p<.000). This

result indicates that when parents have strict rules and punish their child when it does not

respect these rules, this will also lead to higher levels of political among adolescents.

Consequently, adolescents raised in households with few rules and no punishment, will have

lower levels of political trust.

These findings are in line with previous findings: while more communication, more

encouragement and more strictness (i.e. an authoritative parenting style) has a positive effect

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on the development of levels of political trust among adolescents, low communication and

encouragement and high strictness (i.e. an authoritarian parenting style) and high

communication, high encouragement and low strictness (i.e. a permissive style) lead to the

development of lower levels of political trust among adolescents. These results confirm the

hypothesis that an authoritative style leads to higher levels of political trust, while an

authoritarian or permissive style lead to lower levels of political trust. The results of our

separate analysis provide additional proof for the hypothesis (see Appendix C).

Table 3 also shows whether parenting styles as reported by parents have an effect on

the adolescents’ level of political trust. By examining the parenting styles as reported by the

parents we can investigate whether the actual parenting style or the perceived parenting style

affects the development adolescents’ levels of political trust (hypothesis 2). We could only

use one measure to examine this hypothesis: communication with the adolescent reported by

parents.

The results show that communication with adolescents as reported by parents does not

have a significant effect on the adolescents’ level of political trust (β= -.011, p= .621). Even

when we examine the communication with the adolescent for mothers and fathers separately,

we do not find a significant effect (for full overview of the results see Appendix B). This

confirms our second hypothesis: the parenting style as perceived by the adolescent affects the

development of their level of political trust, not the actual parenting style as it was reported by

the parents. This result is in line with previous studies, which found that parents do not

always send clear messages to the adolescents, which causes discrepancies between the

original message of the parents and the interpretation of this messages by the adolescents.

However, how adolescents interpret the messages are more influential than the actual

messages the parents send, even if the interpretation is inconsistent with the original intend

(Padilla-Walker & Carlo, 2004; Wray-Lake & Flanagan, 2012).

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Table 3: the effect of the perceived and actual parenting styles on the development of levels of

political trust among adolescents.

Effect of parenting styles on

adolescents’ levels of political

trust

B β

Parenting practice

Communication with

parents (reported by the

adolescents)

.314 (.059) .132***

Encouragement from


adolescents)

.174 (.070) .061*

Strictness of the parents

(reported by the

adolescents)

.361 (.062) .126***

Communication with

adolescent (reported by

parents)

-.036 (.074) -.011ns

Control variables

Girl .035 (.074) .010ns

TSO -.288 (.083) -.080***

KSO -.877(.239) -.079***

BSO -.611(.115) -.120***

Political trust of the

parents

.144 .023) ,133***

Intercept 2.633 (.368)***

R² 9.5%

N 2013 Source: Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012. The entries in the first column are unstandardized

coefficients with standard errors between brackets. The second column contains standardized

coefficient to enhance the comparability between the variables. Note: * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001.

The second model (Table 4) investigates how the interaction between the mother’s and

father’s parenting style affects the adolescents’ levels of political trust (hypothesis 3). We

examined this by calculating an interaction term between the variables encouragement from

the mother and encouragement from the father. In addition, we also tested interaction terms

between the perceived parenting styles of the adolescents and the actual parenting styles as

reported by the parents, for results see Appendix D. The interaction term between

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encouragement from the mother and encouragement from the father has no significant effect

on the adolescents’ levels of political trust (β= -.006, p= .964). In addition, we tested an

interaction term for the parenting styles as reported by the parents, which also was not

significant (β= -.403, p= .096). This means that parents do not necessarily have to utilize the

same parenting style in order to have an effect on the adolescents level of political trust, for

example, an authoritarian mother will not influence the effect of an authoritative father on the

development of political trust. Following these results, we cannot confirm the third

hypothesis. These finding are in contrast with previous research on parental homogeneity,

which found that when parents have the same political preferences the socialization will be

stronger (Jennings et al., 2009; Rico & Jennings, 2012; Zuckerman et al., 2007). A possible

explanation is that adolescents transcend the experiences they have with their mother and

father individually onto the political system. That we found similar findings for families

where parents live together and families where parents live apart further strengthens this

assumption, since in the latter group parents do not fit their parenting styles as much as in the

former group.

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Table 4. The effect of interaction between the parenting style of the mother and father on the

development of levels of political trust among adolescents.

Effect of homogeneous parenting styles on

adolescents’ levels of political trust

B (s.e.) Β

Parenting practice

Encouragement from mother (reported by

the adolescent) .176 (.196) .069ns

Encouragement from father (reported by

the adolescent) .349 (.217) .149ns

Communication with adolescent

(reported by the mother)

.756 (.521) .228ns

Communication with adolescent

(reported by the father)

.904 (.558) .261ns

Interaction term

Encouragement from

mother*encouragement from father

-.003 (.067) -.006ns

Communication with

mother*communication with father

-.260 (.156) -.407ns

Control variables

Girl .011 (.078) .003ns

TSO -.303 (.086) -.085***

KSO -.936 (.269) -.079***

BSO -.560 (.125) -.106***

Political trust of the mother .068 (.023) .071**

Political trust of the father .067 (.021) .077***

Intercept .926 (1.968)ns

R² 7.6%




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Discussion

At the beginning of the article, we formulated three hypotheses concerning the effect

of parenting styles on the level of political trust among adolescents. Following previous

research, we examined whether parenting styles have an effect on the adolescents’ level of

political trust (hypothesis 1), whether it is the actual or the perceived parenting styles that

affects the development of levels of political trust among adolescents (hypothesis 2) and

whether the interaction between parents affect the development of levels of political trust

(hypothesis 3). We investigated these hypotheses by performing multiple multivariate

regression analyses.

Our analyses confirmed the first and second hypotheses, but we did not confirm the

third hypothesis. This means parenting styles have an effect on the levels of political trust

among adolescents: an authoritative style will lead to higher levels of political trust, while a

permissive or authoritarian style will lead to lower levels of political trust. In addition we

found that there are discrepancies between the style parents report they use and the style the

adolescents perceive their parents use. It is the parenting style that the adolescents perceive

that affects their development of levels of political trust. Finally, parents individually affect

the development of levels of political of their child. The interactions between the parenting

styles of both parents does not have an effect.

These findings have several implications. First, our findings clearly show that parents play

an important role for the development of political trust. Even though, some scholars propose

that the influence of the family declines during adolescence and other socialization agents

take the foreground (e.g. Vandell, 2000), our results suggest that what parents are still

important influences on the political development of adolescents. Adolescents remain part of

the family system and transcend the experiences within this system onto the political system.

Second, parents have to be aware that adolescent sometimes interpret the message they

send differently than how they originally intended. When looking at the means of the

variables, we already found discrepancies between the reports of the parents and adolescents,

indicating that parents and children do not always interpret things the same way. When further

analyzing this mechanism, we found that the parenting style as perceived by the adolescent is

influential. Parents therefore have to be aware of how they come across. Communication in

this regard is of the utter importance to make sure that there is as less inconsistencies as

possible between parents and adolescents.

17

Third, children transcend their individual experiences within the family system onto the

political system. Parents do not have to adopt the same parenting style to influence their child.

In addition, the parenting style of the father seems to affect the development of political trust

more than the parenting styles of the mother.

However, this study has some limitations we have to take into account. First, we based

ourselves on Flemish data for the analyses, which means we cannot make conclusions about

other political systems than the Flemish one. Second, to study the development of political

attitudes, such as trust, longitudinal data is required to control for trust in prior years (Wray-

Lake & Flanagan, 2012). Third, the measures for the first and second hypotheses are not

completely equal, since we have no information about the encouragement or authority

measures reported by the parents. This could perhaps bias the findings, since the models are

not completely identical. However, since the communication measures are identical, the

results are a proper indication of the hypothesis.

18

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Appendix A

Question wording for the variable “communication with parents”

To what extent do you agree with the following propositions? Ranging from 1 (never agree)

to 4 (always agree).

1. When I have a problem, I talk about it with my parents

2. My parents try to understand my point of view

3. My parents answer truthfully to all of my questions

Question wording for the variable “communication with adolescent”



1. If my child has any problems, I talk about it with him/her

2. I try to understand the point of view of my child

3. I always answer truthfully to all of my child’s questions

Question wording for the variable “encouragement from parents”



1. My mother/father encourages me to make my own decisions

2. My mother/father encourages me to do things my own way

3. My mother/father helps me to be independent

4. When I’m sad or blue, my mother/father notices this

Question wording for the variable “authority”



1. There are clear rules at home about what is allowed and what is not allowed

2. Even when I have a different opinions, I shall do what my parents ask me

3. I know I will be punished at home when I do something I’m not allowed to do

23

Appendix B

Table 5. The effects of perceived and actual parenting styles on the development of

adolescents’ levels of political trust for mother and father examined separately.


adolescents’ levels of political

trust

b β

Parenting practice

Communication with parents

(reported by the adolescents) .329 (.063) .140***

Encouragement from mother

(reported by the adolescents) -.009 (.068) -.004ns

Encouragement from father




Communication with

adolescent (reported by the

mother)

-.130 (.075) -.039ns

Communication with


father)

-.032 (.078) -.009ns

Control variables

Girl .039 (.085) .011ns

TSO -.311 (.085) -.087***

KSO -.967 (.265) -.081***

BSO -.534 (.124) -.101***

Political trust of the mother .065 (.023) .068**

Political trust of the father .070 (.021) .080***

Intercept 3.123 (.415)***

R² 10.4%




24

Appendix C

Table 6. The effect of perceived parenting styles on the development of adolescents’ levels of

political trust for parents living together or not..


adolescents’ levels of

political trust (non-divorced)


adolescents’ levels of

political trust (divorced)

B β b β

Parenting practice

Communication with


adolescents)

.304 (.071) .130*** .449 (.144) .186**

Encouragement from

mother (reported by the

adolescents)

-.026 (.078) -.010ns .063 (.144) .025ns

Encouragement from father

(reported by the

adolescents)

.216 (.069) .091** .271 (.122) .122*


(reported by the

adolescents)

.299 (.071) .107*** .419 (.159) .138**

Communication with


mother)

-.111 (.084) -.034ns

-.076 (.176) -.022ns

Communication with


father)

-.009 (.088) -.003ns

-.275 (.176) -.081ns

Control variables

Girl .054 (.085) .016ns .043 (.184) .012ns

TSO -.377 (.094) -.106*** .031 (.205) .009ns

KSO -1.356

(.313) -.108*** .044 (.520) .004ns

BSO -.550 (.412) -.100*** -.318 (.570) -.067ns

Political trust of the mother ,044 (.026) .047ns .130 (.052) .136*

Political trust of the father ,068 (.024) .078** .094 (.046) .107*

Intercept 3,357 (.457)*** 2,171 (1.005)*

R² 9.8% 15.2%

N 1503 354 Source: Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012. The entries are results from a multivariate regression

analysis with a split file between divorced or non-divorced families. The first column are

unstandardized coefficients with standard errors between brackets. The second column contains

standardized coefficient to enhance the comparability between the variables. Note: * p<.05; ** p<.01;

*** p<.001.

25

Appendix D.

Table 7. Interaction effects between the parenting style of the parents and the perceived

parenting style of the adolescent on the development of levels of political trust among

adolescents.

Effect of homogeneous parenting

styles on adolescents’ levels of

political trust

B Β

Parenting practice

Communication (reported by the adolescent) -.038 (.479) -.016ns

Encouragement from mother .027 (.197) .011ns

Encouragement from father .272 (.217) .116ns

Communication with adolescent (reported by the

mother)

.765 (.592) .231ns

Communication with adolescent (reported by the

father)

.640 (.607) .185ns

Interaction term

Encouragement from mother*encouragement from

father

-.006 (.066) -.013ns

Communication with mother*communication with

father

-.283 (.157) -.438ns

Communication (reported by adolescent)*

communication (reported by mother)

.008 (.105) .014ns

Communication (reported by adolescent)*

communication (reported by father)

.114 (.112) .195ns

Control variables

Girl .013 (.077) .004ns

TSO -.270 (.085) -.076**

KSO -.976 (.267) -.082***

BSO -.487 (.125) -.092***

Political trust of the mother ,068 (.023) ,071**

Political trust of the father ,069 (.021) ,079***

Intercept 1. 649 (2.230)ns

R² 9.3%




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